


My Dear Companion

by chicagoartnerd



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, F/F, Femslash, First Crush, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagoartnerd/pseuds/chicagoartnerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss has nightmares. Sometimes they're what you would expect; blood/gore, death, loss. And sometimes they are of a meadow full of Oconee Bells and a broken promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Dear Companion

**Author's Note:**

> I can't write anything happy it seems. Oh well this is "Hunger Games" fandom so happy isn't usually on the menu. Hope you enjoy the femslashy angst.

She has nightmares.

They always start out from her time in the Arena.

Sometimes they are of Rue, sometimes they are the faces of all the fallen tributes she didn’t really know, never got a chance to care about.

The dreams eventually morph in to the war, watching her friends be tortured, seeing the bombs go off and knowing it meant death. Death of one of the only things she had left.

The little ducktail of her blouse incinerated to bloodless dust and flames.

Her dreams always ended in fire now. Good or bad there were walls and oceans of fire.

And some times the nightmares were bright pastel things.

Screen shots of a happier time when things were hard but she still had a mother and a father and Prim. A time when they were a family and there was still laughter and smiling. This was the kind of nightmare she was having tonight.

She was in a white field of Oconee Bells as the wind whipped her braid to shreds; throwing her dark hair in to her line of sight. The sun was making everything glow from within but there was no heat just the idea of warmth cast from white light.

Suddenly Madge flickered in to being before her. They were both children in body in this dream. It was partially a memory.

_“Just go and leave me if you wish to, It will never trouble me, For in your heart you love another And in my grave I'd rather die.”_

The melody of the old song ghosted over her as Madge lips moved solemnly over the words.

She extended her pale hand; clutching one of the Oconee Bells so hard it was dribbling blood down the pure white bloom.

“Do you remember our promise? You said we’d run away and finally be free some place they couldn’t catch us. I asked if you’d be mine for forever and ever. You said 'yes.'”

The voice that cracked was her own but it wasn’t her childhood tremor,

“I tried Madge. I remember how I promised and I couldn’t keep it. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.”

She shook her small golden halo of hair and sang out softly again,

_“I once did have a dear companion, indeed I thought her love my own.”_

Even in her dreams the tears were hot and acidic, cutting ruts down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.”

_“Katniss.”_

She leaned towards her sob-wracked form and gently wove her hand through her hair, letting the stained white and yellow flower get tangled in her mangled braid. Then she ghosted her lips over Katniss’s.

Softly, like the wings of a Painted Lady.

She stopped crying and looked in to those guileless eyes.

“It’s enough that you knew that I loved you.”

She choked on a sob and croaked out,

“But I didn’t understand. I never truly understood. You were one of the only people who would sit with me in school, a silent companion, and then eventually the Mockingjay pin. I still thought it was out of duty not love. I’m sorry I didn’t see.”

Then miraculously Madge as Katniss had last seen her, before she had left for the Games, before the bombing that took her life, appeared.

She embraced her and Katniss jumped in response, slowly settling in to the hug.

“You know it now though.”

“Now that it’s too late.”

Madge pulled back and looked at her sadly as a small smile played on her lips,

“It’s never too late to love and be loved by some one. Remember that.”

And with one more faint squeeze of her shoulders she vanished and she jolted awake.

Alone in her bed.

Back in her shack of a house in the rebuilt District 12. Her hand was wet and burned as small trails of blood trickled down it. She had been clutching the Mockingjay pin back so desperately in her sleep it had cut in to her palm.

She wiped her hand down the front of her covers and laid back down. Her eyes burned with unshed tears as she wondered what good Madge’s love had done her. Was she happy simply because Katniss had survived? Through everything she alone had stumbled through outwardly intact.

But inside she dreamed awake and screaming of the Games and the war.

None of it seemed worth it.

She would never see them smile again. Madge, Rue, Prim so many others she didn’t know as well. What good was her love if they were dead?

She couldn’t sleep again so she left the emptiness of her room and wandered out past where the electric fence surrounding the district used to be, in to the forest at moonrise.

She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter.

She started off aimlessly walking but soon it turned in to a jog and then an all out sprint through the tress. The silhouettes of logs and branches swiped past her as she hurried through the moonlit leaves.

And then in an instant it all fell away in to wide pasture, white and glowing with Oconee Bells in the moonlight.

She simply stared, her breath caught heavy in her throat.

Then slowly wandered out in to the glen, laid down in the flowers and waited for some sort of peace to overtake her. It rarely did these days. But if she closed her eyes she could almost feel the sun and Madge’s smile and maybe that was enough. To be alive and remember what it was like to love and be loved.

Even if it wasn’t it was all she had and she was going to hold on to it just as viciously as she had her life. It was what she was best at after all.


End file.
